You're Nikolas Cruz. You just brained a bunch of thots and chads at your old high school, but you're not ready to kill yourself yet. Already a dangerous move, but understandable. Then you get caught and charged with the shooting. There's now three basic possibilities for you now:
A) Get declared insane and live the rest of your life in a mental hospital with decent conditions
B) Get sentenced to life in prison without parole
C) Get the death penalty
Option A is unlikely, since it's very rare for an insanity defense to work. When lawyers bring up mental illness, they usually are trying to get a reduced sentence and not trying to argue insanity. Plus, Cruz doesn't show signs of true insanity, at least one that would meet the strict legal standard
Option B is definitely possible, and the option Cruz has chosen, but utter nightmare fuel. Since Cruz is a high profile inmate, everyone in prison will want to beat the shit out of him to gain respect and credibility. This means he's probably going to be in solitary confinement in a high-security jail for most, if not all, of his sentence. He'll be locked up in a small concrete box 23 hours a day, with only an hour of "recreation" locked in a small outdoor cage. Even if he gets contact with other inmates, he won't last long as a 5'8 skinny shrimp. And he'll NEVER get out. His only chance at release is decades down the line where they send his barely conscious ass to a hospice the week before he dies.
Option C is probably his best option. On death row, he'll get privileges that other inmates don't get, and that could mean a lot for the quality of his prison life. He'll have a better chance at making friends with the people in his cell block, and if he waives all his appeals he'll get executed likely within a few years.
I understand why he wouldn't want the death penalty, but if he continues to try to get life without parole, he's basically going to be already dead, locked up in a cold conrete coffin to rot for possibly 60-70 years until he dies anyway. He'll save himself a lot of trouble if he just fast-tracks the death penalty.
A) Get declared insane and live the rest of your life in a mental hospital with decent conditions
B) Get sentenced to life in prison without parole
C) Get the death penalty
Option A is unlikely, since it's very rare for an insanity defense to work. When lawyers bring up mental illness, they usually are trying to get a reduced sentence and not trying to argue insanity. Plus, Cruz doesn't show signs of true insanity, at least one that would meet the strict legal standard
Option B is definitely possible, and the option Cruz has chosen, but utter nightmare fuel. Since Cruz is a high profile inmate, everyone in prison will want to beat the shit out of him to gain respect and credibility. This means he's probably going to be in solitary confinement in a high-security jail for most, if not all, of his sentence. He'll be locked up in a small concrete box 23 hours a day, with only an hour of "recreation" locked in a small outdoor cage. Even if he gets contact with other inmates, he won't last long as a 5'8 skinny shrimp. And he'll NEVER get out. His only chance at release is decades down the line where they send his barely conscious ass to a hospice the week before he dies.
Option C is probably his best option. On death row, he'll get privileges that other inmates don't get, and that could mean a lot for the quality of his prison life. He'll have a better chance at making friends with the people in his cell block, and if he waives all his appeals he'll get executed likely within a few years.
I understand why he wouldn't want the death penalty, but if he continues to try to get life without parole, he's basically going to be already dead, locked up in a cold conrete coffin to rot for possibly 60-70 years until he dies anyway. He'll save himself a lot of trouble if he just fast-tracks the death penalty.
